Kenya

In a sun-drenched valley of central Kenya, a few dozen villagers gather each Saturday to sit under the trees and conduct the painstaking work of reconciliation that their government leaders seem happy to avoid. These traumatized victims of Kenya's post-election clashes meet to talk, pray, sing and -- they hope -- heal.

A year ago, opposition leader Raila Odinga hit the streets to protest a flawed presidential election that sparked the deadliest political standoff in Kenya's post-independence history. Demonstrations led to riots and then ethnic clashes that spread across this East African nation, leaving more than 1,000 people dead and 350,000 homeless. It wasn't the first time Odinga had to fight to be heard.

Police opened fire on rampaging opposition supporters who were burning houses and cars, looting businesses and attacking people Monday as the death toll in Kenya's post-election violence climbed to at least 125. In Kibera, a sprawling slum of Nairobi, youths armed with machetes, wooden posts and iron bars tore down shacks and looted whatever was left to take. Similar scenes played out across the country in the third day of riots to protest what the opposition contends is election-rigging.

Rioting, political instability and a spiraling death toll after Kenya's disputed election is seen as drastically denting investor confidence in what had been seen as one of Africa's emerging success stories. Scores of people have been killed in turmoil since President Mwai Kibaki was declared the victor Sunday with a narrow majority. The opposition says the poll was stolen and European Union monitors say it lacked credibility.

When Gabriel Okelo rose early Thursday to join a banned opposition rally, he did not take his machete. But he was sure he would be using it to kill again very soon. Just the day before, he said, he had slashed two people to death because they were from a rival tribe. It wasn't hard, he recalled. It was night, about 8, and he was among 50 other members of his Luo tribe who rampaged through a suburb nine miles east of Nairobi, the capital, named Uhuru -- "freedom" in Swahili.

At the edge of a Nairobi neighborhood called the Ghetto, there is a bridge across a gray, stinking creek, on a street called Mother Teresa Road: The creek has become a frontier between two worlds, and the bridge the border crossing. All day Saturday, under the protection of paramilitary police, people shuttled from one side to the other, carrying furniture, bedding, bags and pots as they steadily divided themselves by tribe. On one side of the bridge, in the Ghetto, no Luos can live.

In Nairobi's slum district of Kibera, people prayed for peace Sunday under the charred cross and blackened walls of the burned Lutheran church. But in the narrow alleys just 100 yards away, the thugs with machetes still rule. When the service ended, the parishioners in their Sunday best walked home through neighborhoods still teetering on a knife's edge.

Three days of shuttle diplomacy by the top U.S. diplomat on African issues had failed Monday to get the two rivals for the Kenyan presidency to the negotiation table, but there were signs that they were inching toward talks. Opposition leader Raila Odinga, who has accused President Mwai Kibaki of stealing the election, called off a protest rally of his supporters planned for today in order to allow mediation of the crisis by the African Union.

When men with machetes and axes chased Paul Otieno from his home here, they wanted more than his belongings. They wanted to cut off his foreskin. "They were shouting, 'If we don't kill you, we'll cut your private parts,' " Otieno, a 25-year-old mechanic, said of the attack Sunday. "They were just shouting, 'Kill! Chop them all!' " In Kenya, circumcision is a rite of passage for male members of most tribes. The Luos, however, do not practice it.

As the head of the African Union met with Kenya's political rivals here Wednesday to try to get them talking, opposition supporters waited tensely on the streets for news and warned of more violence if President Mwai Kibaki stays in power. John Kufuor, the AU chairman and Ghana's president, met separately with Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, trying to help steer them toward a political resolution to end tribal violence that followed their disputed presidential contest.